Answered Prayers ---------------------- Sputter...sputter...sputter... tiny engine with one headlight. Helmet-clad, my dear uncle, were you glad when the balmy wind ruffled your shirt-collars? Serpent of night in blinking light the shadow of roadside trees... Switch the gear by your right foot, my dear uncle - the rebel, my master on two-wheels - press the brakes on the left. Or was it the other way around. Either way it was too close now, to put on end to your motion - your harried journey to touch your own flesh. Devotion that greeted the news of your first-born son after seventeen years of my-dear-aunty's prayers. The unthankful bark of that roadside tree - branches lurching, leaves aflutter like a vulture's wing - did not step back to spare your jubilant collision. Sputter...sputter...sputter... mighty engine with one headlight. Helmet-clad, my dear uncle, were you glad, as you sank to the deep sea, that your undying prayers had earned a fresh boon? mG. ***